Fergie's Tech Blog: 01/04/2009

Mark Fiore: Rocket Science

More Mark Fiore brilliance.

Via The San Francisco Chronicle.

Enjoy.

- ferg

DataPath to Support U.S. Battlefield SATCOM

The U.S. Army has contracted DataPath Inc. for the company to provide satellite communication technologies to support battlefield communications.

Under the $100 million deal, Georgia-based DataPath will upgrade its DataPath Satellite Transportable Terminals used by the Army to operate on the Wideband Global Satellite communication system. In order for the Army's terminals to operate on the WGS system, DataPath will integrate them with Ka band conversion kits.

Officials say the satellite communication terminals are being converted to support the Army's Joint Network Node/Warfighter Information Network-Tactical program and enable mission-critical battlefield communications.

More here.

South African Commission Seeking Legal Action Against 'Hacker' Who Leaked Documents to Wikileaks

Linda Ensor writes on Business Day:

The Competition Commission has laid criminal charges against the unknown hackers who lifted the lid on highly confidential information about the South African banking system that the four big banks wanted to keep under wraps.

The charges had been laid in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, the commission’s manager for strategy and stakeholder relations, Nandisile Mokoena, said yesterday.

The confidential information is contained in the technical report of the inquiry into the banking system undertaken by the commission.

An uncensored version of the report was posted on the Wikileaks.org website after hackers — believed to be based in SA — broke through the security measures put in place by the commission.

More here.

Vietnam Vets Sue CIA for Secret Drug Experiments on GIs

Jeff Stein writes on SpyTalk:

A Vietnam veterans group is suing the CIA for "thousands of secret experiments to test toxic chemical and biological substances under code names such as MKULTRA," its attorneys said today.

The suit was filed in federal court in northern California on behalf of the Washington-based Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc., and six aging veterans with multiple diseases and ailments "tied to a diabolical and secret testing program, whereby U.S. military personnel were deliberately exposed, by government and military agencies, to chemical and biological weapons and other toxins without informed consent," the Morrison & Foerster law firm said in a press release.

The firm said the alleged CIA research program was launched in the early 1950s and continued through at least 1976 at the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Md., as well as universities and hospitals across the country contracted by the CIA.

Defendants include the CIA, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense and various government officials responsible for these agencies.

More here.

Caveat Emptor: Watch Out for Phantom Stores

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

Most people are proud to say they would never fall for a phishing scam, that they would never give their personal and financial information away at fake banking sites, just because someone asked them to in an e-mail. But how many people will use that same common sense when a too-good-to-be-true bargain presents itself at a no-name online electronics shop?

A slew of fake electronics sites, some of them apparently being promoted by major online search engines and comparison-shopping sites, have been swindling consumers out of cash and credit card numbers for several weeks. The Web sites are confusingly named after legitimate electronics and clothing shops in the United States. All say they accept major credit cards and PayPal, and some carry seals boasting that they are "hacker safe."

But customers who order something from these sites soon find their accounts charged increasing amounts for unauthorized transactions.

More here.

Note: For what it's worth, Paradius has long been known to be a source of various forms of cyber crime, and has also been known to host activities of Eastern European cyber criminals formerly affiliated with the notorious Russian Business Network. - ferg

Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps

Via Curious? Read.

Depending on which feature you use, Google Maps offers a satellite view or a street-level view of tons of locations around the world. You can look up landmarks like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China, as well as more personal places, like your ex’s house. But for all of the places that Google Maps allows you to see, there are plenty of places that are off-limits.

Whether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a "Prohibited" sign on the following 51 places.

More here.

Hat-tip: Bruce Schneier

Hacked Lawmaker Calls For Cyber Briefings

Via The National Journal.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., told House leaders Tuesday that few members of Congress have availed themselves of secret briefings meant to educate them about outsiders trying to penetrate lawmakers' computers and steal sensitive information. Despite "repeated assurances" that the House leadership would inform members of Congress about threats to their computer systems and personal electronic devices, members are still at risk of being hacked by foreign and domestic sources, Wolf wrote in a letter [.pdf] sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders, which was obtained by National Journal.

In September of last year, the Republican and Democratic caucuses held classified briefings for lawmakers about cyber risks, but "the meetings were sparsely attended," Wolf wrote. "I fear that Members are no better informed today than they were before."

Because so few members showed up, Wolf wants to require mandatory briefings. He has proposed including language to that effect in the rules package set to be adopted Tuesday during the first meeting of the new Congress. Wolf suggested that the meetings address "threats to House information security, threats to information security when members travel abroad, and measure being taken [to] secure House computer networks and electronic devices."

More here.

Hat-tip: Pogo Was Right

Cisco Global Site Selector Appliances DNS Vulnerability

Via Cisco.com.

The Cisco GSS platform allows customers to leverage global content deployment across multiple distributed and mirrored data locations, optimizing site selection, improving Domain Name System (DNS) responsiveness, and ensuring data center availability.

The GSS is inserted into the traditional DNS hierarchy and is closely integrated with the Cisco CSS, Cisco Content Switching Module (CSM), or third-party server load balancers (SLBs) to monitor the health and load of the SLBs in customers data centers. The GSS uses this information and user-specified routing algorithms to select the best-suited and least-loaded data center in real time.

A vulnerability exists in the GSS when processing a specific sequence of DNS requests. An exploit of the vulnerability may result in a crash of the DNS service on the GSS.

More here.

Google Trends Falls Victim to Disturbing 'Stunt'

Miguel Helft writes on the New York Times "Bits" Blog:

Google Trends, a service shows the relative popularity of search terms, fell victim to what appeared to be an ugly stunt on Tuesday: a sketch of an airplane flying into two towers appeared as its second most popular item under Hot Trends, its list of the fastest rising searches at any given moment. TechCrunch and a swastika appeared on Hot Trends. A week later, the list was attacked again.

Search experts said the repeated incidents are something of embarrassment for the world’s No. 1 search engine. “It’s not a good thing for Google,” said Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land. After last summer’s incidents, Google should have done more to detect this type of stunt, he said. “They should have been able to see that the query was not made up of words,” he added.

More here.

Homeland Security's New Rules on Electronic Data Collection Rile Businesses

Thomas Frank writes on USA Today:

The Department of Homeland Security will collect millions of new electronic records about private planes, imported cargo, foreign visitors and federal contractors as part of an array of controversial last-minute security policies imposed by the Bush administration.

Businesses say the policies are costly, and worry that sensitive information could be released if a database is lost or stolen. Some charge the Homeland Security Department with rushing to impose policies and ignoring business concerns.

"Industry keeps reaching out to (them), but our comments are continually dismissed," said Catherine Robinson, director of high-tech trade policy for the National Association of Manufacturers trade group, which represents 14,000 companies.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said that by collecting information electronically, the department can run security checks more quickly than with paper forms, and could flag people or cargo that should be barred from the USA. Some changes have been in the works for more than a year.

More here.

CheckFree Warns 5 Million Customers After Hack

Robert McMillan writes on ComputerWorld:

CheckFree and some of the banks that use its electronic bill payment service are notifying more than 5 million customers after criminals took control of several of the company's Internet domains and redirected customer traffic to a malicious Web site hosted in the Ukraine.

The Dec. 2 attack was widely publicized shortly after it occurred, but in a notice [.pdf] filed with the New Hampshire Attorney General, CheckFree disclosed that it was warning many more customers than previously thought.

That's because CheckFree is not only notifying users of its own CheckFree.com Web site of the breach, it is also working with banks to contact people who tried to pay bills from banks that use the CheckFree bill payment service.

"The 5 million people who were notified about the CheckFree redirection were a combination of two groups," said Melanie Tolley, vice president of communications with CheckFree's parent company, Fiserv, in an prepared statement. "1.) those who we were able to identify who had attempted to pay bills from our client's bill pay sites and minus those who actually completed sessions on our site; and 2.) anyone enrolled in mycheckfree.com."

Tolley wouldn't say what banks were affected by the hack, but the majority of these five million customers were CheckFree's own users, she said. In total, about 42 million customers access CheckFree's bill payment site, she said.

More here.

FBI Stoking Fears of 'Cyber Armageddon'

An AFP newswire article, via PhysOrg.com, reports that:

Cyber attacks pose the greatest threat to the United States after nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction -- and they are increasingly hard to prevent, FBI experts said Tuesday.

Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, told a conference in New York that computer attacks pose the biggest risk "from a national security perspective, other than a weapon of mass destruction or a bomb in one of our major cities."

"Other than a nuclear device or some other type of destructive weapon, the threat to our infrastructure, the threat to our intelligence, the threat to our computer network is the most critical threat we face," he added.

US experts talk of "cybergeddon," in which an advanced economy -- where almost everything of importance is linked to or even controlled by computers -- is sabotaged by hackers.

Michael Balboni, deputy secretary for public safety in New York state, described "a huge threat out there" against everything from banking institutions to municipal water systems and dams.

Henry said that terrorist groups are working to create a virtual 9/11, "inflicting the same kind of damage on our country, on all our countries, on all our networks, as they did in 2001 by flying planes into buildings."

More here.

AT&T Building $23M IPv6 Network for U.S. Army Europe

Carolyn Duffy Marsan writes on NetworkWorld:

AT&T is building a production-quality IPv6 data network for the U.S. Army in Germany that will cost approximately $23 million when it is completed next year.

The Army is ahead of the curve with its new state-of-the-art data network, which will support its operations in Grafenwoehr, Germany – the home of the 7th Army Joint Multinational Training Center (JMTC).

AT&T is installing and testing a new campus data network, which will support Army personnel at 600 JMTC buildings. AT&T says the installation will be complete in January 2010.

More here.

Twitter Hacker Says Admin Password Was 'Happiness'

Kim Zetter writes on Threat Level:

An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News.

The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter's administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user's account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter's support staff, who'd chosen the weak password "happiness."

Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts.

"I feel it's another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws," he wrote in an IM interview. "I'm sure they find it difficult to admit it."

The hacker identified himself only as an 18-year-old student on the East Coast. He agreed to an interview with Threat Level on Tuesday after other hackers implicated him in the attack.

More here.

Data Breaches Up Almost 50 Percent, Affecting Records of 35.7 Million People

Brian Krebs writes in The Washington Post:

Businesses, governments and educational institutions reported nearly 50 percent more data breaches last year than in 2007, exposing the personal records of at least 35.7 million Americans, according to a nonprofit group that works to prevent identity fraud.

Identity Theft Resource Center of San Diego is set to announce today that some 656 breaches were reported in 2008, up from 446 in the previous year. Nearly 37 percent of the breaches occurred at businesses, while schools accounted for roughly 20 percent of the reported incidents.

The center also found that the percentage of breaches attributed to data theft from current and former employees more than doubled from 7 percent in 2007 to nearly 16 percent in 2008.

"This may be reflective of the economy, or the fact that there are more organized crime rings going after company information using insiders," said Linda Foley, the center's co-founder. "As companies become more stringent with protecting against hackers, insider theft is becoming more prevalent."

More here.

So Why Did Obama Pick Panetta as CIA Chief?

Leon Panetta

Matthew B. Stannard writes in The San Francisco Chronicle:

There is no question the agency is emerging from a troubled period, criticized by many for failing to stop the Sept. 11 attacks, for mistakenly concluding that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and for shipping terror suspects to secret overseas sites to be tortured or worse.

At the same time, there is broad consensus on the need for a robust and effective intelligence service to meet modern national security and foreign policy challenges.

Under changes established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the job of briefing the president each morning no longer falls to the CIA director. That job now belongs to the director of National Intelligence, who oversees the CIA and other clandestine services. That job reportedly will go to retired Adm. Dennis Blair under President Barack Obama.

Under that structure, Panetta's lack of intelligence and overseas experience might matter less than his managerial and political experience - and his bipartisan reputation for integrity, several analysts said Monday.

More here.

Intelligence: Pakistani Hackers Plan Attack on Indian Cyber Networks

A Press Trust of India (PTI) article, via The Hindustan Times, reports that:

After the Mumbai terror strikes, anti-India elements in Pakistan are now planning an attack on Indian computer networks, intelligence agencies have warned.

Already Pakistani hackers are trying out a dry run against Indian networks through popular websites registered there after the Mumbai terror strikes, Home Ministry sources told PTI on Tuesday.

"Every time the relations between the two countries dampen, Pakistanis start attacking Indian computer networks and this has increased after the Mumbai terror attacks," a Home Ministry source said.

Pakistani hackers have created websites such as the www.songs.pk, which are infested with software to hack data from the targeted computers, it said.

"The website www.songs.pk has over 12 lakh [equivalent to 1.2 Million - ferg] Indian users who are downloading stuff from these websites daily," said a cyber expert in the Ministry.

With these websites being highly popular, it will take only a few minutes for the hackers to take command of over 12 lakh computers in few minutes and the number of such computers can multiply in every minute, sources said.

More here.

Internet Security Faces Chronic Problems

Loren B. Thompson writes for UPI:

U.S. network software and procedures must be continually updated to eliminate weaknesses, and tested to assure gaps have been successfully closed.

Also, there must be a mechanism among network administrators across the United States for sharing information about threats that provides timely and useful warnings of danger.

Finally, defensive measures carried out by the U.S. government and its relevant agencies must be sensitive to the missions of users, so that they do not impair network functionality in the process of providing protections.

The respected SANS Institute uses a six-step framework for explaining how cyber incidents should be addressed that begins with being prepared, and then proceeds through identification of danger, containment of the threat, eradication of the threat, system recovery and follow-up.

More here.

U.S. Judge Revives Lawsuit Over Bush Wiretap Program

Henry K. Lee writes in The San Francisco Chronicle:

A defunct Islamic charity in Oregon that says it was illegally wiretapped by federal authorities can pursue its lawsuit challenging President Bush's clandestine eavesdropping program, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Monday.

In reviving a suit filed by Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said the group had enough publicly available evidence to show that it could reasonably believe it had been wiretapped.

The ruling is "a big win for us," said Jon Eisenberg, an Oakland attorney for the plaintiffs.

Walker had dismissed the suit in July, saying the group could not use a classified document that the government had accidentally turned over to the foundation.

But later that month, the group produced non-secret information - an October 2007 speech in which a deputy FBI director said that the agency "used ... surveillance" in an investigation into whether the organization was linked to terrorism. The speech was given at a conference of the American Bankers Association and American Bar Association on money laundering.

More here.

Video: Inside a Credit Card Fraud Factory

Kevin Poulsen writes on Threat Level:

Detective Bob Watts of the Newport Beach Police Department takes us on a guided tour of the sophisticated credit card forgery operation run by Chris Aragon, an associate of Max Butler, the uber hacker I profiled for this month's Wired. Aragon made a living turning Butler's stolen credit card data into near-perfect forgeries, complete with holograms. Here's how.

More here.

Spamhaus: Google Now 4th Most Spam-Friendly Provider

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

Google's free services are being heavily exploited by spammers to redirect visitors to sites touting knockoff designer drugs and scams, according to the latest rankings from Spamhaus.org, a group that tracks unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Last month, Security Fix called attention to Microsoft's persistent ranking on Spamhaus's running list of the "Top 10 Worst Spam Service ISPs". Now that Microsoft has cleaned up its act, it appears the bad guys are moving on to Google, which is now ranked #4 on the list (#1 being the worst).

"Microsoft got rid of the bad guys, and off they went to Google, which is now hosting a lot of the stuff that was on Microsoft's domains," said Richard Cox, Spamhaus's chief information officer.

Other Internet providers, including Sprint and Verizon, currently round out the #8 and #10 slots on the Top 10 list, respectively.

More here.

Wanted By The FBI: Job Seekers

Via FBI.gov.

Attention job seekers: the FBI is looking for a few good men and women to fill a variety of mission-critical roles within our organization.

Well actually, we’re looking for a few thousand—just over 2,100 professional staff employees and 850 special agents, to be precise—in one of the largest hiring blitzes in our 100-year history.

According to Assistant Director John Raucci of our Human Resources Division, it’s to bring more people on board with skills in critical areas, especially language fluency and computer science. “But,” explains Raucci, “we’re also looking for professionals in a wide variety of fields who have a deep desire to help protect our nation from terrorists, spies, and others who wish us harm.”

More here.

Hat-tip: FedBlog

Constitutionality of FISA to be Reviewed

Steven Aftergood writes on Secrecy News:

A federal appeals court in Oregon will hold a hearing next month on a government appeal of a 2007 judicial ruling that said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is unconstitutional.

The FISA is a statute that regulates domestic intelligence, and generally requires judicial authorization for intelligence search and surveillance within the United States. Critics of Bush Administration electronic surveillance activities such as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” have argued that they unlawfully circumvented the provisions of the FISA.

But the FISA itself, as modified by the USA PATRIOT Act, is unconstitutional, a federal court ruled [.pdf] on September 26, 2007.

That ruling came in response to a challenge by Brandon Mayfield, who was erroneously arrested in connection with the Madrid bombings in 2004 based on a false fingerprint match and subsequent surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI later apologized for his mistaken arrest and provided a financial settlement. But Mayfield continued to challenge the legal foundation of the arrest.

More here.

Classic xkcd: Converting to Metric

Click for larger image.

We love xkcd. Really.

Enjoy!

- ferg

60 Minutes: Reading Your Mind

Via CBS News/60 Minutes.

How often have you wondered what your spouse is really thinking? Or your boss? Or the guy sitting across from you on the bus? We all take as a given that we'll never really know for sure. The content of our thoughts is our own - private, secret, and unknowable by anyone else. Until now, that is.

As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, neuroscience research into how we think and what we're thinking is advancing at a stunning rate, making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds.

More here.

Bush Legacy in California Called 'Negative,' 'Zilch'

Carla Marinucci writes in The San Francisco Chronicle:

President Bush once remarked at a White House party that in the famously liberal enclave of San Francisco, his supporters were so rare that "you could probably fit them all in one room."

He wasn't exaggerating, and he would do little to alter his standing. He never once set foot in San Francisco during his two terms, and he was hardly much chummier with California as a whole, the nation's most populous state and the world's eighth-largest economy.

The 43rd president's legacy in the Golden State, according to the unsparing assessment of Democratic consultant Phil Trounstine, is "zilch."

"He regarded California sort of like France - as a foreign entity for which he had nothing but scorn," said Trounstine. "Except for this: He did more damage to California than he ever did to France."

More here.

CIA Tracking 4000 UK Terror Suspects

Tim Shipman writes in The Age:

The CIA has begun an unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain to help MI5 monitor 4000 terrorist suspects.

More than four out of 10 CIA operations to prevent attacks on US soil are now conducted against targets in Britain.

This has led to friction between British and American spies, with some US intelligence officers irritated that resources are being diverted to gather intelligence on suspects in their closest ally's backyard. British intelligence officers do not know the identity of all the CIA informers and are uneasy about some of the uses to which the intelligence has been put.

More here.

More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Maryland Police Spying

Lisa Rein and Josh White write in The Washington Post:

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor.

More here.

Hat-tip: Pogo Was Right

Opinion: Be Wary of Using Military as Domestic Police

Gene Healy and Benjamin Friedman write in The OC Register:

The mainstream media has finally gotten around to reporting that the Pentagon has assigned active-duty troops to a homeland defense mission, a historical first. On Oct. 1, the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, freshly redeployed from Iraq, began a year-long assignment as a domestic "chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force," or CCMRF ("Sea-Smurf"). The 1st BCT is the first of three CCMRF teams, who will comprise 15,000-20,000 soldiers, according to the Army. The other two will come from the Army National Guard or reserves.

Neither the terrorist threat nor the hazards of bad weather require rethinking our traditional reluctance to use standing armies at home. We need not fear a coup, but we should worry about misusing our busy military for civilian tasks and developing an tendency to rely on the troops to answer every scare.

Initial reports were that the 1st BCT might be used to deal with civil unrest and crowd control, missions that would be in severe tension with the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the president's ability to use the U.S. military as a domestic police force. In September, the Army Times described the unit's training as "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," including beanbag bullets, Tasers and traffic roadblocks.

That report, along with the Bush administration's claim that the Constitution allows that president to use forces as he sees fit, no matter what Congress forbids, created well-founded fears that the CCMRFs first attack would be on Posse Comitatus. Yet Pentagon spokespeople deny that forces will be used for law enforcement purposes. And one suspects that the Bush administration's monarchial view of executive power will be out of fashion come January.

More here.

Hat-tip: Radley Balko

Image source: PrisonPlanet.com

India: Infosys, Wipro Receive Threatening Terror e-Mails

Via The Hindustan Times.

Six prominent IT companies in the city, including Infosys and Wipro, have received e-mails threatening to blow up their buildings, a top police officer said in Bangalore on Sunday.

Joint Commissioner of Police B Gopal Hosur told PTI here that the companies received e-mails threatening to blow up their establishments two days ago and immediately informed the police.

The police have already begun investigations, he said, but did not divulge further details.

Link.

Image of The Day: Contents of The Toilet

Via GraphJam.

UK: Police Set to Step Up Hacking of Home PCs

David Leppard writes on The Times Online:

The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.

More here.

Idiocy in America: Amtrak Photo Contestant Arrested for Snapping Pictures of Amtrak Trains

Carlos Miller:

Armed with his Canon 5D and his new Lensbaby lens, photographer Duane Kerzic set out to win Amtrak’s annual photo contest this week, hoping to win $1,000 in travel vouchers and have his photo published in Amtrak’s annual calendar.

He ended up getting arrested by Amtrak police; handcuffed to a wall in a holding cell inside New York City’s Penn Station, accused of criminal trespass.

Kerzic says he was hardly trespassing because he was taking photos from the train platform; the same one used by thousands of commuters everyday to step on and off the train.

“The only reason they arrested me was because I refused to delete my images,” Kerzic said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime on Friday.

“They never asked me to leave, they never mentioned anything about trespassing until after I was handcuffed in the holding cell.”

In fact, he said, the only thing they told him before handcuffing him was that “it was illegal to take photos of the trains.”

Obviously, there is a lack of communication between Amtrak’s marketing department, which promotes the annual contest, called Picture Our Trains, and its police department, which has a history of harassing photographers for photographing these same trains.

Much more here.

Note: This is what Bruce Schneier calls the "War on the Unexpected" -- people in positions of authority in this country have clearly lost their freekin' minds. -ferg

Wyndham Hotel Group Hacked

Via The Office of Inadequate Security.

If you stayed at a Wyndham hotel, check your mail, because you may be getting a letter from the chain telling you of a hack that occurred months ago.

In a letter [.pdf] to the New Hampshire Attorney General dated December 23, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts updated a notification sent to states attorney general back in early October about a breach involving their data center in Phoenix. The date of the breach and date of discovery were not indicated in the follow-up letter and the original notification to states attorney general is not currently available online.

More here.

U.S. Toll in Iraq, Afghanistan

Iraq and Afghanistan statistics via The Boston Globe (AP).

As of Friday, Jan. 2, 2009, at least 4,221 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,400 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is the same as the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EST.

As of Friday, Jan. 2, 2009, at least 559 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Friday at 10 a.m. EST.

Of those, the military reports 406 were killed by hostile action.

More here and here.

And as always, the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count keeps the grim watch on their website here.

Honor the Fallen.

Some Kids' Cameras Coming With Viruses

Via WBZTV.com.

A popular digital camera for children is causing problems for at least one Minnesota family this Christmas. Some of Fisher-Price's Kid-Tough digital cameras have viruses that are affecting not just the camera, but computers as well.

Anna Tapper couldn't wait to tear open and try out her favorite present.

"I take pictures of lots of things," Anna said.

Her father, Jeff Tapper, said she had a big smile on her face the minute she knew what it was.

"She was glad to have her own camera and she didn't have to ask mom and dad for theirs and she could take as many pictures as she wanted," Tapper said.

When Tapper went to download her work, he found her camera had two viruses. Luckily, his anti-virus software spotted them before he downloaded them onto his computer. Without an up-to-date virus-fighter, his laptop could've been infected.

"Especially since it's a kid's digital camera it's the last thing you'd expect to have a virus on it," Tapper said.

More here.

Hat-tip: Consumerist

Friday Monkey Blogging: Chimp Plays Surrogate to Tiger Cubs

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I have started a regularly recurring blog entry meme every Friday afternoon, inspired by Bruce Schneier's regular series of "Friday Squid Blogging" posts, and my very own maddening Monkey Theory.

Here is this week's installment.

Via The Daily Mail.

When two white tiger cubs were born during a hurricane they had to be separated from their mother after their sanctuary flooded.

However they have since found an unlikely surrogate mother in chimpanzee Anjana, who has taken on the role of caring for the cubs.

The two-year-old chimp has been helping keeper China York care for the 21-day-old cubs at The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (TIGERS) in South Carolina.

'Mitra and Shiva, were born during Hurricane Hannah,' said Dr Bhagavan, founder of TIGERS. "During that time everything flooded in the sanctuary and they had to be moved into the house as their mother became stressed.

'It was important for their safety that they were separated.'

Placed into the care of infant animal care giver China and her chimpanzee companion, Anjna, the cubs have become almost inseparable from their new motherly figures.

More here.

Image source: Barry Bland / Barcroft Media / The Daily Mail

Gaza Cell Phones Targeted

Via Strategy Page.

As Israeli bombs began to fall on Gaza in the past week, Palestinians also found local radio and TV broadcasts interrupted, and replaced with messages from the Israeli armed forces, warning civilians, for their own safety, to stay away from Hamas personnel. Similar messages showed up on Palestinian cell phones. All this is nothing new.

During the last two years, Israeli Information War specialists hacked into the Syrian and Lebanese phone systems, and distributed messages meant to cause problems for Islamic terrorist groups. In the Syria incident, Israel sent thousands of messages to Syrians offering a $10 million reward for information on the whereabouts of missing Israeli soldiers. Syrian intelligence officials believed the campaign was more interested in recruiting intelligence agencies. Many Syrians thought it was all an attempt by their own government to find and identify disloyal citizens.

More here.

Woman Fools Japan's Airport Security Fingerprint System

An AFP newswire article, via The Sydney Morning Herald, reports that:

A South Korean woman barred from entering Japan last year has reportedly passed through its immigration screening system by using tape on her fingers to fool a fingerprint reading machine.

The biometric system was installed in 30 airports in 2007 to improve security and prevent terrorists from entering into Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

The woman, who has a deportation record, told investigators that she placed special tapes on her fingers to pass through a fingerprint reader, according to Kyodo News.

Japan spent more than Y4 billion ($A64 million) to install the system, which reads the index fingerprints of visitors and instantly cross-checks them with a database of international fugitives and foreigners with deportation records, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

More here.

Hat-tip: Gizmodo

Classic xkcd: I Know You're Listening

Click for larger image.

We love xkcd.

- ferg

Malware Blamed in Latest SAIC Breach

Via The Office of Inadequate Security.

Science Applications International Corporation ("SAIC"), recipient of a number of large government contracts, notified [.pdf] the New Hampshire Attorney General on December 9th of a security breach involving malware. The specific malware was not named, but was described as "designed to provide backdoor access."

If their description and explanation sounds familiar, it may be because SAIC had another breach almost a year ago where malware (a keylogger) also evaded their detection system. In that breach, it was mostly corporate account data at risk. The nature of the data in this most recent incident is of more concern due to its security implications.

More here.

2009: The International Year of Astronomy

Via StarDate.org.

Astronomers are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of modern observational astronomy in 2009. The International Year of Astronomy commemorates Galileo Galilei's first use of the telescope to study the night sky in 1609. He discovered that the surface of the Moon is rough, that the Milky Way consists of a vast number of stars, that Venus shows phases, and that moons orbit Jupiter.

His discoveries confirmed that Earth is not the center of the universe and demonstrated that the universe is both vast and dynamic -- discoveries that revolutionized human understanding of the cosmos and our place in it.

More here.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to All.

Fergie's Tech Blog

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Google Trends Falls Victim to Disturbing 'Stunt'

Homeland Security's New Rules on Electronic Data Collection Rile Businesses

CheckFree Warns 5 Million Customers After Hack

FBI Stoking Fears of 'Cyber Armageddon'

AT&T Building $23M IPv6 Network for U.S. Army Europe

Twitter Hacker Says Admin Password Was 'Happiness'

Monday, January 05, 2009

Data Breaches Up Almost 50 Percent, Affecting Records of 35.7 Million People

So Why Did Obama Pick Panetta as CIA Chief?

Intelligence: Pakistani Hackers Plan Attack on Indian Cyber Networks

Internet Security Faces Chronic Problems

U.S. Judge Revives Lawsuit Over Bush Wiretap Program

Video: Inside a Credit Card Fraud Factory

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Wanted By The FBI: Job Seekers

Constitutionality of FISA to be Reviewed

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Classic xkcd: Converting to Metric

60 Minutes: Reading Your Mind

Bush Legacy in California Called 'Negative,' 'Zilch'

CIA Tracking 4000 UK Terror Suspects

More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Maryland Police Spying

Opinion: Be Wary of Using Military as Domestic Police

India: Infosys, Wipro Receive Threatening Terror e-Mails

Image of The Day: Contents of The Toilet

UK: Police Set to Step Up Hacking of Home PCs

Idiocy in America: Amtrak Photo Contestant Arrested for Snapping Pictures of Amtrak Trains

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Wyndham Hotel Group Hacked

Friday, January 02, 2009

U.S. Toll in Iraq, Afghanistan

Some Kids' Cameras Coming With Viruses

Friday Monkey Blogging: Chimp Plays Surrogate to Tiger Cubs

Gaza Cell Phones Targeted

Woman Fools Japan's Airport Security Fingerprint System

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Classic xkcd: I Know You're Listening

Malware Blamed in Latest SAIC Breach

2009: The International Year of Astronomy

Happy New Year

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